Chandler the visible-hand

ALFRED D. CHANDLER, JR.

The Visible Hand
The Managerial Revolution
in American Business

The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England

Copyright © 1977 by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Fifteenth printing, 1999

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Chandler, Alfred Dupont.
The visible hand.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Business enterprises-United States-ManagementHistory. 2. Industrial organization-i-Unired StatesHistory. 3. United States-Industries. I. Title.
HFS343·CS84
6584'00973
77- 1529
ISBN 0-674-94051-1 (cloth)
ISBN 0-674--9405z-() (paper)

Acknowledgments
This book had its beginnings some fifteen years ago, when the late Arthur
C. Cole, Thomas C. Cochran, and I agreed to write a three-volume series
on the history of American business. Cole was to review the evolving
structure of the American business system. Cochran was to examine the
place of business in its broader culture, and in 1972 published Business ill
American Life. I was to study changing business practices, particularly
those concerned with the management of the firm.
My own study acquired its first focus when I received a grant from the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to examine the rise of big business and the
public response to it. By concentrating on the coming of modern business
enterprise I believed that I could broaden my contribution to the series by
describing the changing processes of production and distribution in the
United States and the ways in which they have been managed, since the
eighteenth century. The second part of the Sloan Foundation project, that
dealing with the public response to big business, was carried out by Louis
Galambos, who published his results in 1975 in The Public 1111age of Big
Business in A merica, 1880-194°. The work I began under the Sloan
Foundation grant was completed with assistance from the Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University.
I am greatly indebted to the officers of the Sloan Foundation and to Dean
Lawrence E. Fouraker and the heads of the Division of Research at the
School who provided funds to pay for time and facilities so necessary to
the completion of such an extended study.
The research and writing of this history was carried out in a traditional
manner. It has been pieced together from reading business records and
secondary works, and from countless discussions with students and colleagues. No teams of scholars or computerized data were involved. I
learned much from graduate students, particularly those who wrote dissertations on topics related to the themes in this book. These included
William H. Becker, Charles N. Cheape III, Russell I. Fries, Harold Livesay, Edwin J. Perkins, P. Glenn Porter, and Mary A. Yeager. I am espe-

..

VII

Contents

[ xi

PART III

The Revolution in Distribution
and Production

7

Mass Distribution

2°7

209

The Basic Transformation 209
The Modern Commodity Dealer 209
The Wholesale Jobber 215
The Mass Retailer 224
The Department Store 225
The Mail-Order House 230
The Chain Store 233
The Economies of Speed 235

8

Mass Production

240

The Basic Transformation 240
Expansion of the Factory System 244
The Mechanical Industries 249
The Refining and Distilling Industries 253
The Metal-Making Industries 258
The Metal-Working Industries 269
The Beginnings of Scientific Management 272
The Economies of Speed 281

PART IV

The Integration of Mass Production

with Mass Distribution
9

285

The Coming of the Modern Industrial Corporation

287

Reasons for Integration .287
Integration by Users of Continuous-Process Technology 289
Integration by Processors of Perishable Products 299
Intergration by Machinery Makers Requiring Specialized
Marketing Services 3°2
The Followers 312

Contents
INTRODUCTION: The Visible Hand
Modern Business Enterprise Defined
Some General Propositions 6

PART I

1

The Traditional Processes of

Production and Distribution
I

I

I

The Traditional Enterprise in Commerce

3
I

5

Institutional Specialization and Market Coordination 15
The General Merchant of the Colonial World 17
Specialization in Commerce 19
Specialization in Finance and Transportation 28
Managing the Specialized Enterprise in Commerce 36
Managing the Specialized Enterprise in Finance and
Transportation 40
Technological Limits to Institutional Change in Commerce 48

2

The Traditional Enterprise in Production

50

Technological Limits to Institutional Change in Production 50
The Expansion of Prefactory Production, 1790-1840 5 1
Managing Traditional Production 62
The Plantation-an Ancient Form of Large-Scale Production 64
The Integrated Textile Mill-a New Form of Large-Scale
Production 67
IX

x ]

Contents
The Springfield Armory-Another Prototype of the Modern
Factory 72
Lifting Technological Constraints 75

PART II

The Revolution in Transportation
and Communication

3

79

The Railroads: The First Modern Business Enterprises,
I 850s-1 860s
81
Innovation in Technology and Organization 81
The Impact of the Railroads on Construction and Finance 89
Structural Innovation 94
Accounting and Statistical Innovation 109
Organizational Innovation Evaluated 120

4

Railroad Cooperation and Competition, 1870s-1880s
New Patterns of Interfirm Relationships 122
Cooperation to Expand Through Traffic 124
Cooperation to Control Competition 133
The Great Cartels 137
The Managerial Role 143

5

System-Building, 1880s-19005 145
Top Management Decision Making' 145
Building the First Systems 148
System-Building in the 1880s 159
Reorganization and Rationalization in the 1890S 171
Structures for the New Systems 175
The Bureaucratization of Railroad Administration 185

6

Completing the Infrastructure

188
Other Transportation and Communication Enterprises
Transportation: Steamship Lines and Urban Traction
Systems 189
Communication: The Postal Service, Telegraph, and
Telephone 195
The Organizational Response 203

188

122

Introduction: The Visible Hand
The title of this book indicates its theme but not its focus or purpose. Its
purpose is to examine the changing processes of production and distribution in the United States and the ways in which they have been managed.
To achieve this end it focuses on the business enterprise that carried out
these processes. Because the large enterprise administered by salaried
managers replaced the small traditional family firm as the primary instrument for managing production and distribution, the book concentrates
specifically on the rise of modern business enterprise and its managers. It
is a history of a business institution and a business class.
The theme propounded here is that modern business enterprise took the
place of market mechanisms in coordinating the activities of the economy
and allocating its resources. In many sectors of the economy the visible
hand of management replaced what Adam Smith referred to as the
invisible hand of market forces. The market remained the generator of
demand for goods and services, but modern business enterprise took over
the functions of coordinating flows of goods through existing processes
of production and distribution, and of allocating funds and personnel for
future production and distribution. As modern business enterprise acquired functions hitherto carried out by the market, it became the most
powerful institution in the American economy and its managers the most
influential group of economic decision makers. The rise of modern
business enterprise in the United States, therefore, brought with it managerial capitalism.

Modern business enterprise defined

Modern business enterprise is easily defined. As figure I indicates,
it has two specific characteristics: it contains many distinct operating
units and it is managed by a hierarchy of salaried executives.
Each unit within the modern multiunit enterprise has its own adminI

Contents

[ xiii
Standard Oil Trust 4 I 8
General Electric Company 426
United States Rubber Company 433
E.1. Du Pont de Nemours Powder Company 438
The Growing Suprema~yof Managerial Enterprise 450

The Maturing of Modern Business Enterprise 455

14

Perfecting the Structure 456
The Professionalization of Management 464
Growth of Modern Business Enterprise Between the Wars 469
Modern Business Enterprise Since 194 I 476
The Dominance of Modern Business Enterprise 482

CONCLUSION:

Tl)e Managerial Revolution

in American Business 484
General Patterns of Institutional Growth 484
The Ascendancy of the Manager 490
The United States: Seed-Bed of Managerial Capitalism 498

Appendixes
Notes

515

Index

587

503

The Visible Hand
looked closely at the new institution these entrepreneurs created, at how it
was managed, what functions it carried out, and how the enterprise continued to compete and grow after the founders had left the scene. Instead
they have argued as to whether these founding fathers were robber barons
or industrial statesmen, that is, bad fellows or good fellows. Most historians, as distrustful as the economists about the enterprises these men
built, agreed that they were bad. These same historians, however, made
few value judgments either way about the new class of managers whose
actions were so influential in the continuing development of the American
economy.
In recent years economists and historians have increasingly turned their
attention to modern economic institutions. Economisrs such as Edward
S. Mason, A. D. H. Kaplan, John Kenneth Galbraith, Oliver E. Williamson, William J. Baumol, Robin L. Marris, Edith T. Penrose, Robert T.
Averitt, and R. Joseph Monsen, following the pioneering work of Adolph
A. Berle, Jr., and Gardiner C. Means, have studied the operations and
actions of modern business enterprise. They have not attempted, however,
to examine its historical development, nor has their work yet had a major
impact on economic theory. The firm remains essentially a unit of production, and the theory of the firm a theory of production.
Economists with a historical bent have only just begun to study
institutional change and its impact on industrial organization. Douglass C.
North has been the innovator here.' In his work with Lance E. Davis he
outlined a most useful theory of institutional change and applied it to
American economic growth. In his study with Robert Paul Thomas he
dernonsrrated how the changing industrial organization affected the rise
of the west. The works of North and his colleagues use this sweeping
panorama of history to test, buttress, and refine their theory. They have
not yet focused on a detailed analysis of the historical development of any
specific economic institution.
Historians of the American experience have also moved to the study
of institutions. Such scholars as Robert H. Wiebe, Morton Keller, Samuel
Hays, and Lee Benson have taken a close look at the changing nature of
political, social, and economic organizations. They have pioneered in
what one analyst of recent writing in American history has called the
"new institutionalism.l" Few historians, however, have tried to trace the
story of a single institution from its beginnings to its full growth. None
have written about the rise of modern business enterprise and the brand of
managerial capitalism that accompanied it.
This study is an attempt to fill that void by concentrating on a specific
rime period and a specific set of concerns. It centers on the years between
the I 840S and the I 92os-when the agrarian, rural econonlY of the United

Tables
Form of accounts recommended by the convention of railroad commissioners
held at Saratoga Springs, New York, June 10, 1879 113-115
2. Albert Fink: classification of operating expenses and computation of unit
costs 118-119
3. Railroad systems with capitalization in excess of $100 million, 1893 168
4. Railroad systems with capitalization in excess of $100 million, 1906 169
5. Manufacturers' trade associations in the hardware trades, 1870S and 1880s 318
6. The success and failure of 11lergers, 1888-1906 340-344
7. Petroleum companies with assets of $20 million or more, 1917 35I
8. Iron and steel companies with assets of $20 million or more, 1917 360
9. Percentage of total product value produced by oligopolists within industrial
groups, 19o~1919 366
10. American multinationals, 1914 368
I I. The location of the largest manufacturing enterprises, 1929, 1935, 1948, 1960
37°
Appendix A. Industrial enterprises with assets of $20 million or more, 1917 5°3-512
Appendix B. Railroad systems with assets in excess of $200 million, 19I 7 513
I.

Figures
The basic hierarchical structure of modern business enterprise 2
2. Simplified organization chart of a large railroad, 1870S 108
3. Floor plan of Washburn automatic, all-roller, gradual-reduction mill, June
1879 251
4. Flow chart of Washburn experimental flour mill, June 1879 252
5. Flow chart, Pratt Refinery, 1869 255
6. Plan of the Cambria Iron Works, 1878 261
7. Plan of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, ca. 1885 263-265
8. Organization chart of Armour & Company, 1907 394-395
9. Organization chart of United States Rubber Company, September 190 2 436437
10. Organization chart of United States Rubber Company, January 1917 440-441
I I. The Du Pont Company: relationship of factors affecting return on investment 447
I.

xv

xvi]

Figures

12. The multidivisional structure: manufacturing
13. The multidivisional structure: retailing 478

Maps
Rates of travel, 1800, 1830, 1857 84-85
The Pennsylvania Railway System, 1876 152

458

I 2 ]

The Visible Hand

substance of managerial tasks differed from one sector to another and
from one industry to another. So too did the specific relationships between
managers and owners. And once a managerial hierarchy was fully established, the sequence of its development varied from industry to industry
and from sector to sector.
Nevertheless, these differences can be viewed as variations on a single
theme. The visible hand of management replaced the invisible hand of
market forces where and when new technology and expanded markets
permitted a historically unprecedented high volume and speed of materials
through the processes of production and distribution. Modern business
enterprise was thus the institutional response to the rapid pace of technological innovation and increasing consumer demand in the United
States during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Visible Hand
istrative office. Each is administered by a full-time salaried manager. Each
has its own set of books and accounts which can be audited separately
from those of the large enterprise. Each could theoretically operate as an
independent business enterprise.
In contrast, the traditional American business firm was a single-unit
business enterprise. In such an enterprise an individual or a small number
of owners operated a shop, factory, bank, or transportation line out of a
single office. Normally this type of firm handled only a single economic
function, dealt in a single product line, and operated in one geographic
area. Before the rise of the modern firm, the activities of one of these small,
personally owned and managed enterprises were coordinated and monitored by market and price mechanisms.
Modern enterprise, by bringing many units under its control, began to
operate in different locations, often carrying on different types of economic activities and handling different lines of goods and services. The
activities of these units and the transactions between them thus became
internalized. They became monitored and coordinated by salaried employees rather than market mechanisms.
Modern business enterprise, therefore, employs a hierarchy of middle
and top salaried managers to monitor and coordinate the work of the units
under its control. Such middle and top managers form an entirely new
class of businessmen. Some traditional single-unit enterprises employed
managers whose activities were similar to those of the lowest level managers in a modern business enterprise. Owners of plantations, mills, shops,
and banks hired salaried employees to administer or assist them in administering the unit. As the work within single operating units increased, these
managers employed subordinates-foremen, drivers, and mates-to supervise the work force. But as late as 1840 there were no middle managers in
the United States-that is, there were no managers who supervised the
work of other managers and in turn reported to senior executives who
themselves were salaried managers. At that time nearly all top managers
were owners; they were either partners or major stockholders in the
enterprise they managed.
The multiunit enterprise administered by a set of salaried middle and
top managers can then properly be termed modern. Such enterprises did
not exist in the United States in 1840. By World War I this type of firm
had become the dominant business institution in many sectors of the
American economy. By the middle of the twentieth century, these enterprises employed hundreds and even thousands of middle and top managers
who supervised the work of dozens and often hundreds of operating units
employing tens and often hundreds of thousands of workers. These enterprises were owned by tens or hundreds of thousands of shareholders and

The Visible Hand
carried out billions of dollars of business annually. Even a relatively small
business enterprise operating in local or regional markets had its top and
middle managers. Rarely in the history of the world has an institution
grown to be so important and so pervasive in so short a period of time.
Describing and analyzing the rise of an institution and a class of such
immense historical and current significance provides a fascinating challenge to a historian of the American economy. Because this institution is
so easy to define and because it came into being so recently, the scholar has
little difficulty in answering the historian's special questions of when,
where, and how. He can record with precision at what dates, in what
areas, and in what ways the new institution first appeared and then
continued to grow. In so doing, he can document the rise of the new
subspecies of economic man-the salaried manager-and record the
development of practices and procedures that have become standard in
the management of American production and distribution. Once he has
answered the historical questions of when, where, and how, he can begin
to suggest the reasons whythis institution first appeared and then became
so powerful.
The challenge is particularly attractive because it has not yet been
taken up. For all its significance, the history of this institution has not been
told. Scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to its historical development. Before the 1930S economists only grudgingly acknowledged its
existence, and since then they have looked on large-scale business enterprise with deep suspicion. Much basic economic theory is still grounded
on the assumption that the processes of production and distribution are
managed, or at least should be managed, by small traditional enterprises
regulated by the invisible hand of the market. According to such theory,
perfect competition can only exist between such single-unit enterprises,
and such competition remains the most efficient way to coordinate
economic activities and allocate economic resources. The modern, multiunit enterprise, by its very act of administrative -coordination, brings
imperfect competition and misallocation of resources. Since many economists have for so long considered the modern business enterprise as an
aberration, and an evil one at that, few have taken the trouble to examine
its origins. For them the desire for monopoly power has provided an adequate causal explanation.
Until recently historians as well have concentrated little systematic
attention on the rise of modern business enterprise and the managerial
class that came to administer it. They have preferred to study individuals,
not institutions. In fact, few businessmen have appeared in general American histories except those who founded modern business enterprises.
Historians have been attracted by entrepreneurs, but they have rarely

18 ]

Traditional Processes of Production and Distribution

customers. He also acted as correspondent or agent for merchants in other
p~rt~, taking their goods on consignment and selling for a fixed commission.

The resident general merchant acted as the community's financier and
was responsible for the transportation as well as the distribution of goods.
He provided short-term loans to finance staple crops and manufactured
goods when they were in transit, and he made long-term loans to planters,
farmers, and artisans to enable them to clear land or to improve their
facilities. Usually in cooperation with other merchants, he arranged for
the handling of ships needed to carry these goods and often, with other
partners, was a shareholder in these ships. With other merchants, he also
insured ships and cargoes. Again with others, he built wharves for the
ships. In the same port town, he helped to finance the construction, both
by himself and with others, of rum distilleries, candle works, ropewalks,
and shipyards-that is, those manufacturing industries not carried on by
craftsmen in small family shops.
In all these activities, the colonial merchant knew personally most of
the individuals involved. He tried, where possible, to have members of his
own family act as his agents in London, the West Indies, and other North
American colonies. If he could not consign his goods and arrange for
purchase and sale of merchandise through a family member or through a
thoroughly reliable associate, the merchant depended on a ship captain or
supercargo (his authorized business agent aboard ship) to carry out the
distant transactions. Even then, the latter was often a son or a nephew.
The merchant knew the other resident merchants in his town, who collaborated with him in insuring and owning ships, as he did the shipbuilders,
ropemakers, and local artisans who supplied his personal as well as his
business needs. Finally, he was acquainted with the planters, the farmers,
and country storekeepers, as well as the fishermen, lumbermen, and others
from whom he purchased goods and to whom he provided supplies.
Between Baltimore and Charleston, where" there were few ports with
resident merchants, a somewhat different pattern of commerce developed." In Maryland and Virginia, and to some extent farther south,
planters bought directly from the British merchants. Factors in London
arranged for the sale of their tobacco and rice and at the same time
purchased any supplies they needed. The planters, in turn, often provided
their smaller neighbors with the same type of services they received from
the British factors. As tobacco planting moved inland in the mideighteenth century, Scottish merchants began to send factors and agents
to set up permanent stores, where tobacco could be collected and finished
goods sold to the upland farmers and planters. Farther south, the resident
merchants in the towns of Charleston and Savannah began to handle the


[

I

9

trade of their region in much the same way as did northern merchants.
With the coming of political independence, this personal family business world began to change. The break with Britain disrupted old trading
patterns and led to the opening of new areas to American merchants,
including the Baltic, the Levant, China, India, and the East Indies. The
continuing growth of population and the rapid expansion west into
Kentucky and Tennessee, north into Maine, and southwest into Georgia
enlarged domestic markets, as did the growing seaport towns themselves.
After the outbreak of the wars of the French Revolution, trade with
Europe and the West Indies, which had been cut off since the Revolution,
again boomed. Far more important, however, for the American economy
than the after-effects of the political revolution in France was the advancing industrial revolution in Great Britain. For the new United States
became almost overnight the major source of supply of the raw material
and the major market for the products of the new machine-made textiles.
The coming of these new trades was the most important single factor in
bringing specialization to business enterprise and impersonalization into
business activities.

Specialization in commerce

Even without the boom in cotton and textiles, specialization in commercial business enterprises certainly would have come to the United States in
the fifty years after 1790. Before the Revolution specialization was already
appearing in the distribution of goods in New York, Philadelphia, and
other large towns, The distinction between merchants and shopkeepers
was becoming clear. The former continued to sell at retail as well as at
wholesale, but the shopkeepers sold only at retail, buying from the
merchants rather than directly from abroad." By 1790, the merchants were
also beginning to specialize in certain lines of trade. Specialization was
coming, too, in manufacturing in New England, and possibly parts of
the middle states, with the beginning of a domestic or "putting-out"
system, and the first use of simple machines.!? Well before the 1790s,
shoes, boots, and even furniture were being manufactured for the West
Indian and other distant markets by entrepreneurs who "put-out" work
into the homes of farmers and town dwellers. Nevertheless, the rapid
reorientation and expansion of American commerce and the rapid development of specialized business institutions resulted directly from the new
and unprecedented high volume of cotton exports and new machine-made
imports.
The impact of cotton on American commerce did not become fully

22 ]


the other. On the American side, as Harold Woodman, the historian of
the factor, has written: "Anyone with cotton on hand could easily get an
advance from the merchant to whom he chose to consign it, be that
merchant in the interior, in the port cities, or in the North, or in Europe."
On the British side, a commission merchant in I 833 stated that it was
virtually impossible to get goods on consignment without giving advarices." These advances were usually from two-thirds to three-fourths
the value of the current crop. The providing of advances did, therefore,
carry a certain risk, for if the price fell during transit, as it often did while
the annual harvest was being completed, the house,providing the advance
might have to sell at a loss.
The credit system, a complex one, relied on traditional instruments:
the promissory note and the bill of exchange. Planters, factors, or river or
coastal port merchants were rarely paid in cash but in promissory notes or
bills of exchange payable in 60, 90, or even 120 days at 7 or 8 percent
interest. If the advance was given before the delivery of the crop, it was
made in the form of a promissory note, which was often renewed if it
became due before the actual sale was transacted. If the payment was
made at the time of delivery, it was made in the form of a bill of exchange,
drawn on the house providing the credit. Such transactions were further
complicated by the need to convert pounds sterling into dollars. A simple
sale, involving two middlemen, could give rise to as many as four different
transactions and four different bills of exchange. Woodman provides a
revealing example from the correspondence of William Johnson, a
Mississippi planter, and his factor, Washington Jackson & Company of
New Orleans:
In the 1844-1845 season, Johnson had the New Orleans firm sell part of his
cotton in Liverpool through Todd, Jackson and Company, the Liverpool branch of
the firm. After shipping his cotton to New Orleans, Johnson drew on Washington
Jackson and Company, thereby creating a domestic bill for discount. The New
Orleans firm reimbursed itself for this advance by drawing on the Liverpool house
after shipping the cotton there, thus creating a second bill for discount. When a sale
was made in Liverpool, Todd, Jackson and Company sent a sterling bill for the
proceeds over and above the advance drawn upon them. The New Orleans firm
sold the sterling bill to a bank for local currency and then authorized Johnson to

draw another bill to cover his returns over the advance he had drawn originally. IS

It was in providing advances and in discounting bills of exchange that
the older resident merchants came to play their most important role in
the new cotton trade. Some, indeed, soon became specialists in finance.
Those with the largest resources became, through the financing of the
cotton trade, the most influential businessmen of the day. They were, for


[

2

3

the most part, British business houses in Liverpool and London. They
stood at the end of the long chain of credit stretching from the banks of
the Mississippi to Lombard Street.
In the major ports, the volume of trade was large enough to permit the
rise of another type of specialized enterprise-the brokerage house. N ot
attached to any specific set of clients, it brought together buyers and
sellers of cotton for a commission." The basic distinction between the
broker and the factor was that the former did not, as did the latter, buy or
sellon his principal's account or, more precisely, did not make contracts
in his own name that were binding on his principal. The broker's function
was to help factors or other merchants or manufacturing agents obtain
the cotton necessary to fill out a shipment or order and dispose of odd lots
after the completion of a major transaction.
As the farming frontier moved west across the mountains into the
Mississippi Valley, a somewhat different network evolved to move provisions (corn, pork, and whiskey), some cotton, and then wheat and other
grains from the west to the south and east. Where the soil was tilled by
many small farmers rather than a few large planters, the country storekeeper took the place of the plantation factor as the first businessman on
the chain of middlemen from the interior to the seaport." These storekeepers, the economic descendants of the pre-Revolutionary Scottish
factors in Virginia and of the storekeepers scattered in the interior of
colonial Pennsylvania and New England, marketed and purchased for the
farmer much as the factors did for the planters. They differed from the
factors, however, in that they bought and sold primarily on their own
account.
In the early years of western settlement the outgoing crops and the
incoming goods moved along different routes. Tobacco, hemp, lead, and
produce went down the river to and through New Orleans to the east
and the finished goods came westward across the mountains to Pittsburgh
and then down the Ohio. Storekeepers, and at first even farmers, accompanied their crops south. In a short time, however, they made arrangements with commission merchants in New Orleans and other river pons
-Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Memphis, and Nashville-to receive
their crops and sell them, or to forward them to other merchants, to
provide advances, and to send payments." The storekeepers, like the
plantation cotton factors, went east normally twice a year to purchase
their stocks of finished goods, coffee, tea, sugar, and other staples. There
they had to work out complex arrangements for the transportation of their
goods west and for their warehousing, drayage, and loading at the different transshipment points along the way. The western storekeepers were

24 ]


soon relying on credit more from the eastern wholesalers from whom they
purchased their supplies than from the commission houses through which
they sold their produce.
With the opening of the Erie Canal in the mid-r Szos and the completion of the Ohio and Pennsylvania canal systems in the next decade, a
new trade sprang up, creating still another string of middlemen to handle
the transactions and transshipments involved in moving the crops. Prior to
1830, little wheat had been raised in the Mississippi Valley. Tobacco,
hemp, provisions, horses, and mules, rather than wheat and flour, were the
region's major exports. Then, since the canal provided a shorter route
through a cooler part of the country (wheat and flour sent via New
Orleans often rotted or soured), production expanded. In 1839 Cleveland
received 2.8 million bushels of wheat and flour, or 87 percent more than
New Orleans." In the same year, New York received three times as much
wheat as New Orleans.
The pattern of specialization in the grain trade followed that of the
provisions and cotton trades, yet because of its smaller volume before
I 840, it was less systematized and specialized than that of cotton. Cleveland, Buffalo, and other lake ports, including the new village of Chicago,
became transshipping centers similar to New Orleans and the other
cotton ports. As in the cotton trade, advances and the discounting of notes
on goods in transit came to play critical roles in financing the movement
of crops. Western millers, storekeepers, local merchants who built warehouses, and occasionally the farmers themselves consigned their grain or
flour to commission houses and more specialized freight forwarders in
the lake ports, particularly Buffalo. In return they received advances
which they usually discounted for cash. The Buffalo merchants, in turn,
sent grain to the millers of Rochester, or grain or flour to New York
merchants-such as Eli Hart & Company; Suydam, Sage & Company; or
Chouteau, Merle & Standford-who had previously provided advances.
Whenever the final purchase was not designated, the shipment was sent
on to a commission house or appointed agent in the east for final sale."
That agent might ship it on consignment to a commission house in Liverpool or Rio de Janeiro for sale on the foreign market. These merchants
shipping overseas obtained funds for advances from international merchant banking houses such as the Barings. The grain trade differed from
the cotton trade, however, in that it marketed primarily in the United
States and therefore was financed by American rather than British capital.
Moreover, the trade had hardly been fully established before it was
radically transformed in the 18505 by the coming of the railroad and the
telegraph. The cotton trade, on, the other hand, continued to operate
relatively unchanged for several decades.

I

a ]

The Visible Hand

in control. Ownership became widely scattered. The stockholders did
not have the influence, knowledge, experience, or commitment to take
part in the high command. Salaried managers determined long-term policy
as well as managing short-term operating activities. They dominated top
as well as lower and middle management. Such an enterprise controlled
by its managers can properly be identified as managerial, and a system
dominated by such firms is called managerial capitalism.
As family- and financier-controlled enterprises grew in size and age
they became managerial. Unless the owners or representatives of financial
houses became full-time career managers within the enterprise itself, they
did not have the information, the time, or the experience to playa dominant role in top-level decisions. As members of the boards of directors
they did hold veto power. They could say no, and they could replace
the senior managers with other career managers; but they were rarely in
a position to propose positive alternative solutions. In time, the part-time
owners and financiers on the board normally looked on the enterprise in
the same way as did ordinary stockholders. It became a source of income
and not a business to be managed. Of necessity, they left current operations and future plans to the career administrators. In many industries and
sectors of the American economy, managerial capitalism soon replaced
family or financial capitalism.
The seventh proposition is that in making administrative decisions,
career managers preferred policies that favored the long-term stability
and growth of their enterprises to those that maximized current profits.
For salaried managers the continuing existence of their enterprises was
essential to their lifetime careers. Their primary goal was to assure continuing use of and therefore continuing flow of material to their facilities.
They were far more willing than were the owners (the stockholders) to
reduce or even forego current dividends in order to maintain the longterm viability of their organizations. They sought to protect their sources
of supplies and their outlets. They took on new products and services in
order to make more complete use of existing facilities and personnel. Such
expansion, in turn, led to the addition of still more workers and equipment.
If profits were high, they preferred to reinvest them in the enterprise
rather than pay them out in dividends. In this way the desire of the
managers to keep the organization fully employed became a continuing
force for its further growth.
The eighth and final proposition is that as the large enterprises grew
and dominated major sectors of the economy, they altered the basic
structure of these sectors and of the economy as a whole.

The Visible Hand

[

I I

The new bureaucratic enterprises did not, it must be emphasized,
replace the market as the primary force in generating goods and services.
The current decisions as to flows and the long-term ones as to allocating
resources were based on estimates of current and long-term market
demand. What the new enterprises did do was take over from the market
the coordination and integration of the flow of goods and services from
the production of the raw materials through the several processes of
production to the sale to the ultimate consumer. Where they did so,
production and distribution came to be concentrated in the hands of a
few large enterprises. At first this occurred in only a few sectors or
industries where technological innovation and market growth created
high-speed and high-volume throughput. As technology became more
sophisticated and as markets expanded, administrative coordination replaced market coordination in an increasingly larger portion of the
economy. By the middle of the twentieth century the salaried managers
of a relatively small number of large mass producing, large mass retailing,
and large mass transporting enterprises coordinated current flows of goods
through the processes of production and distribution and allocated the
resources to be used for future production and distribution in major
sectors of the American economy. By then, the managerial revolution
in American business had been carried out,"
These basic propositions fall into two parts. The first three help to
explain the initial appearance of modern business enterprise: why it began
when it did, where it did, and in the way it did. The remaining five
concern its continuing growth: where, how, and why an enterprise once
started continued to grow and to maintain its position of dominance. This
institution appeared when managerial hierarchies were able to monitor
and coordinate the activities of a number of business units more efficiently
than did market mechanisms. It continued to grow so that these hierarchies
of increasingly professional managers might remain fully employed. It
emerged and spread, however, only in those industries and sectors whose
technology and markets permitted administrative coordination to be more
profitable than market coordination. Because these areas were at the
center of the American economy and because professional managers
replaced families, financiers, or their representatives as decision makers
in these areas, modern American capitalism became managerial capitalism.
Historical realities are, of course, far more complicated than these
general propositions suggest. Modern business enterprise and the new
business class that managed it appeared, grew, and flourished in different
ways even in the different sectors and in the different industries they came
to dominate. Varying needs and opportunities meant that the specific

PA R T

one
The Traditional Processes of
Production and Distribution

Most histories have to begin before the beginning. This is particularly
true for one that focuses on institutional innovation. A history of the
modern business enterprise has to start by examining the ways in which the
processes of production and distribution were carried out before it came
into existence, before administrative coordination became more productive and more profitable than market coordination. It has to identify the
specific conditions that led to the rise of the institution and its continuing
growth. An analysis of innovation requires a close inspection of the
context in which it occurred.
Let us therefore first look at the changing processes of production and
distribution from the I 790S to the I 840s, from the time when the ratification of the Constitution provided the legal and political underpinnings of
a national economy until the decade when a new source of energy, coal,
began to be used extensively in production and the railroad and telegraph
began to provide fast, regular, all-weather transportation and communication. Let us begin by examining changes in distribution broadly conceived
as commerce and then focus on the management of production.
13

14 ]


Although the American economy grew rapidly between 1790 and
1840, the size and nature of business enterprises were little changed. As
the population rose from 3.9 million to I 7. I million and as Americans
began to move west across the continent, the total volume of goods
produced and distributed and the total number of transactions involved
in such production and distribution increased enormously. Nevertheless
the business enterprises carrying out these processes and transactions
continued to be traditional single-unit enterprises. Their numbers multiplied at an impressive rate, and their activities became, as Adam Smith
would have predicted, increasingly specialized. Yet they were still managed by their owners. They operated in traditional ways using traditional
business practices. Little institutional innovation occurred in American
business before the I 840s.
Why was this so? As long as the processes of production and distribution depended on the traditional sources of energy-on man, animal, and
wind power-there was little pressure to innovate. Such sources of
energy simply could not generate a volume of output in production and
number of transactions in distribution large enough to require the creation
of a large managerial enterprise or to call for the development of new
business forms and practices. The low speed of production and the slow
movement of goods through the economy meant that the maximum daily
activity at each point of production and distribution could be easily
handled by small personally owned and managed enterprises.

c

H

A

p

T

E

R

1

The Traditional Enterprise in
Commerce
Institutional specialization and market coordination
In the half century after the ratification of the Constitution American
business enterprise became increasingly specialized in commerce and production. The trend was particularly evident in commerce. As commerce
expanded and as commercial activities became more specialized, the
dependence on market mechanisms to coordinate these activities increased
proportionally. In the 1790S the general merchant, the businessman who
had dominated the economy of the colonial period, was still the grand
distributor. He bought and sold all types of products and carried out all
the basic commercial functions. He was an exporter, wholesaler, importer,
retailer, shipowner, banker, and insurer. By the 1840s, however, such tasks
were being carried out by different types of specialized enterprises. Banks,
insurance companies, and common carriers had appeared. Merchants had
begun to specialize in one or two lines of goods: cotton, provisions, wheat,
dry goods, hardware, or drugs. They concentrated more and more on a
single function: retailing, wholesaling, importing, or exporting.
Economic expansion and business specialization greatly increased the
number of business enterprises operating in the economy. In the 1790S a
relatively few merchants living in the eastern ports carried on the major
share of the trade beyond local markets. By the 1840S the much larger
flows of a greater variety of goods were guided from the producers of the
raw materials through the processes of production and distribution to the
ultimate consumer by hundreds and thousands of businessmen who had
little personal acquaintance with others. The motives of the businessmen
were to make a profit on each of the many transactions and such motiva- .
tion seemed to be enough to assure the successful operation of the
economy. Although, as Adam Smith wrote, each businessman "intends
15


[ 35

The first canal lines were organized by merchants who needed the facilities
to transport their goods. But they quickly came to be owned and operated
by specialists. The freight forwarders were (writes Harry Scheiber of
those on the Ohio canals) "men engaged in the transportation business
only, including small-scale operators of one or two boats as well as owners
of large fleets, maintaining regular through-freight arrangements with
the Erie Canal, Pennsylvania Mainline and river boat lines."49
These specialized ancillary entcrprises-s-rhe merchant bankers and the
incorporated bank; insurance, turnpike, and canal companies; the ship's
husbands; the scheduled shipping lines; and the freight forwarders-all
facilitated the flow of goods through the economy. They made it easier
for the merchants to specialize in handling one set of products and functions and to carry out their specialized tasks more efficiently. They helped
to create at that time one of the world's most effective "transaction
sectors," to use a term of Douglass North. The number of transactions,
the volume of goods moved, and the speed and distances carried were as
great as any in history;" The efficiency of this sector must have played
an important role in maintaining the per capita income of Americans at a
time when the population was growing fast." It must have been critical in
sustaining the continued economic development of the country in the
decades before 1840.
Nevertheless, by modern standards the movement and distribution of
goods were hardly efficient. Many transactions and transshipments were
required to move a single shipment from the producer to the ultimate
consumer. The flow of goods was slow and its pace irregular. The movement of goods 'still depended on the vagaries of wind and weather. A
sailing ship could leave on schedule but one could never predict the
precise time of arrival. A transatlantic voyage might take from three
weeks to three months. Droughts and freshets delayed shipments along
rivers and canals in the summer, spring, and fall. Winter freezes stopped
movement of goods completely for several months in all but the southern
parts of the country. Snows isolated even the largest cities for days, and
heavy rains kept smaller interior towns and villages mud-bound for weeks.
Of even more significance, the movement of goods still relied, as it had
for centuries, on wind and animal power. The traditional transportation
technologies offered little opportunity for improvement. By I 840 the
speed of a stagecoach, canal boat, or sailing ship, or the volume carried by
these facilities, could not be substantially increased by improving their
design. By 1840 steam power was just beginning to be used in overland
transportation. (The nation's first railroads only began to go into operation in the 1830s.) And steamboats were still used only on quiet rivers,
bays, and lakes. They were not yet technologically advanced enough to

be employed in the coastal or transatlantic trades. In 1840, well over 90
percent of the Post Office's mail routes were still dependent on the horse."
New technology had not yet lifted the age-old constraints on the speed a
given amount of goods might be moved over a given distance. Such
constraints, in turn, put a ceiling on the volume of activity a commercial
enterprise was called upon to handle.

Managing the specialized enterprise in COl11111erce
Because of these technological constraints on the speed and volume of
moving goods through the economy, not even the rapid expansion of
that economy and its resulting specialization in business activities brought
specialization within the business enterprise itself. Nor did the expanding
economy lead to the integration of several operating units into a single
large firm. No managerial hierarchies appeared. The size of business
enterprise did not grow beyond traditional limits. Its internal administration continued to be carried out along traditional lines. Therefore, although the increased volume of American commerce brought modifications and improvements of existing business methods, instruments, and
institutions, it did not stimulate the invention of new ones.
Until well after 1840 the partnership remained the standard legal form
of the commercial enterprise and double-entry bookkeeping its basic
accounting system. The partnership, normally a family affair, consisted of
two or three close associates. It was a contractual arrangement that was
changed when a partner retired, died, or decided to go into another
business or join another associate. A partnership was often set up for a
single voyage or venture. And one man could be involved in several
partnerships. The partnership was used by all types of business, from the
small country storekeepers to the great merchant bankers who dominated
the Anglo-American trade.
The most powerful business enterprises of the day were international
interlocking partnerships. Thus, the Brown family was represented by
Brown, Shipley & Company in Liverpool; Brown Brothers & Company in
New York; Browns and Bowen in Philadelphia; and Alexander Brown &
Sons in Baltimore. The Ogden New York connection was Ogden, Ferguson & Company; the Liverpool representative, Bolton, Ogden & Company.53 The name and makeup of all these interlocking partnerships
changed constantly over time. Even John Jacob Astor's American Fur
Company, one of the few incorporated commercial enterprises, remained
a partnership. Astor held the large majority of the shares in this company.
His partners received payments from profits in accordance with the


[ 37

number of shares held. The contractual arrangements between partners
in incorporated companies were for a specific period of time, usually five
years. In the case of the American Fur Company, the partners and shares
held changed at each renewal. Except in forming enterprises that provided
supplementary services requiring the pooling of capital (namely banks,
insurance, turnpike, and canal companies), American merchants did not
yet feel the need for a legal form that could give an enterprise limited
liability, the possibility of eternal life, or the ability to issue securities.
Even when an enterprise was incorporated it remained a small single-unit
firm run in a highly personal manner. In the commercial capitalism of the
1840s, owners managed and managers owned their enterprises.
Not even in New York City, which by 1840was one of the most active
commercial centers in the world, was the press of business enough to cause
a merchant to delegate any of his tasks. J. A. Scoville, a New York
merchant and chronicler of his class, indicates the pace and nature of a
merchant's activities by sketching a particularly busy day:
To rise early in the morning, to get breakfast, to go down town to the counting
house of the firm, to open and read letters-to go out and do some business, either at
the Custom house, bank or elsewhere, until twelve, then to take a lunch and a glass
of wine at Delmonico's; or a few raw oysters at Downing's; to sign checks and
attend to the finances until half past one; to go on change; to return to the counting
house, and remain until time to go to dinner, and in the old time, when such things as
"packet nights" existed, to stay down town until ten or eleven at night, and then go
home and go to bed. 54

Inside the counting house-the term first used by the Italians for a
merchant's office-a business was carried on in much the same manner as it
had been in fourteenth-century Venice or Florence. The staff included
only a handful of male clerks." There were two or three copiers, a bookkeeper, a cash keeper, and a confidential clerk who handled the business
when the partners were not in the office. Often partners became responsible for handling one major function. At N. L. & G. Griswold, one of the
most active of the older New York mercantile partnerships, one brother
was responsible for the buying and shipping of goods, and the other took
care of financial affairs. The organization and coordination of work in
such an office could easily be arranged in a personal daily conversation."
The partners' task was, of course, to initiate and carry out the commercial transactions involved in the buying, selling, and shipping of goods.
Transactions with local businessmen were negotiated in the counting
house or on the merchants' exchange, a building designated as a place to
carry out such business dealings. For those carried out in distant commercial centers, partners had to rely on their correspondents, merchants with
whom they contracted to do their work on a commission. If the partner-

ship still owned or chartered ships, its ship captains or supercargoes, who
usually owned shares and were partners in the voyage or venture, handled
the transactions. Although merchants wrote long and detailed letters of
instruction to correspondents, captains, or supercargoes, they had little
control over the actions and decisions of their agents in distant ports or on
distant seas. Letters took weeks and sometimes months to reach their
destinations. Only the man on ,the spot 'knew how to adjust to changing
local market conditions. For these reasons the choice of agent had been
for centuries one of the most important decisions a merchant had to make.
Since loyalty and honesty were still more important than business acumen,
even the more specialized merchants continued to prefer to have sons or
sons-in-law, or men of long acquaintance, as partners or agents handling
their business in a distant city.
The specialization of business in the early nineteenth century actually
eased the merchant's tasks. He handled more transactions and dealt with
more suppliers and customers than did the older general merchants, but
the transactions were more of the same kind and with men in much the
same business. Transactions became increasingly routinized and systematized. Information on a single trade in a few ports was easier to come by
than that for many trades in many ports. Specialization in this way
reduced transactions and information costs.
The function of a merchant's system of accounts was to record the
transactions he carried out. The most advanced accounting methods in
1840 were still those of Italian double-entry bookkeeping-techniques
which had changed little over five hundred years. The major difference
between the accounting practices of colonial merchants and those of the
more specialized mercantile firms of the nineteenth century was that the
larger number of transactions handled by the latter caused them to keep
their books in more meticulous manner.
There were still three standard accounting books used." Actual transactions were recorded in the day, work, or waste book at the time that
they were made. At the end of each month these figures were transferred
to the journal where accounts for sums paid out or goods sold were credited and the goods and monies received were debited. This chronological
record of transactions was, in turn, transferred to appropriate accounts in
the ledger including those for "adventures" or voyages, for "vessels," for
"commodities," as well as those for each individual or firm having transactions with the enterprise. Often, too, there were "merchandise" accounts for miscellaneous items carried in smaller quantities as well as pages
for "notes receivable," "notes payable," and "commission sales." Under
the normal accounting practices of the day, the partners' household
effects and property were also included in the list of assets." The ledger
was generally "balanced" by "being closed to profit and loss" at the end of


[ 39

each year. Such closings were often made at the end of a voyage or
planting season, or when a partnership was being dissolved. The resulting
profit was then listed for each partner in proportion to his share in the
business.
Accounts of the traditional enterprise provided a historical record of
financial transactions, together with information essential for orderly
housekeeping routine. As stated in one of the most widely used lateeighteenth-century texts on accounting: "A merchant ... ought to know,
by inspecting books, to whom he owes, and who owes him, what goods he
purchased; what he has disposed of, with the gain or loss upon the sale,
and what ready money he has by him; what his stock was at first; what alterations and changes it has suffered since, and what it now amounts to."?"
If he were acting as a factor or an agent, his accounts for his principal
should show: "What commissions he has received, how he has disposed of
them, what returns he has made, what of his employer's goods are yet in
his hands, or in the hands of debtors."
By checking his accounts a merchant knew his operating income and
outgo and the working capital he had on hand, but he would have found it
difficult to calculate his net gain or loss. From the special "venture,"
commodities, and ship accounts, he could determine the outcome of single
ventures, ships, or commodities, but only by utilizing information from a
number of interrelated accounts. The Olivers of Baltimore, for example,
followed standard practice when they listed the value of cargo, insurance,
and loading expense in the venture accounts, and the cost of a ship and its
outfitting and insurance under a separate account.?" Their commodity
accounts listed price received and paid, but often included certain expenses as well. All three accounts-venture, vessel, and commodity-were
closed separately to profit and loss. These merchants made no attempt to
determine the precise cost, say, of shipping coffee from a given Latin
American port to Baltimore. Not surprisingly, then, early and even midnineteenth-century texts on accounting said practically nothing about
cost accounting or capital.accounting, but concentrated almost wholly on
the proper way to record financial transactions."
One reason merchants made so little effort to analyze their costs was
because such information could have little effect on their business decisions. Since commodity prices fluctuated, a look at the past year's records
could tell little about next year's gains. Prices were set by current supply
and demand. Markets could be quickly glutted, and sources of supplies
and commodities just as quickly depleted. The business information the
merchants wanted came from external sources not internal records. To
quote Stuart Bruchey: "Experience was of far lesser importance than
fresh news.' '62
In the early nineteenth century, therefore, businessmen were more inno-


[

2 I

New York they were at the start agents of British textile firms who came
to sell cloth and to make arrangements for obtaining raw cotton. They
were soon joined by young men, many of them New Englanders, who
began their business life in this trade. New Englanders also went to the
south. There they and local merchants in the cotton ports and in the new
towns in the interior-Columbia, Augusta, Macon, Montgomery, Jackson, and Natchez-became factors for planters who had recently cleared
the land in the rich black belt of Alabama and Georgia and the bottom
lands along the Mississippi River.
Although the distinction between commission and commercial houses
is often not a clear one, the census figures suggest the importance of the
commission business to the foreign trade." In the census of I 840, 381
commission houses and only 24 commercial houses were listed as engaged
in foreign trade in Louisiana where commodities completely dominated.
For New York (where the commodity trades were major) the division was
1,044 commission houses and 469 commercial houses; in Boston (where
such trades were of much less significance), there were 241 commercial
houses and only 123 commission houses. By 1840, too, the older, less
specialized houses had come to concentrate on cotton or some other
commodity and to trade on commission.
The first man·in the chain of the new middlemen from the planter to
the manufacturer was the cotton factor." He not only marketed the
planter's crop, but also purchased his supplies and provided him with
credit. Relations between the two were close and personal. In purchasing
supplies, equipment, and household goods for the plantation, the factor
purchased locally and normally traveled twice a year to buy in New
York and other commercial centers of the northeast. In marketing the
planter's crop in the impersonal international market, the factor sold
directly to the agents of manufacturers or shipped on consignment to
other middlemen in nearby river or coastal ports, or to others in New
York and other coastal cities, and still others in Liverpool and continental
ports. These middlemen, in turn, sold directly or on consignment to
manufacturers in the United States as well as in Britain or often to yet
another set of middlemen. In addition, the factor made arrangements for
the transportation of the crop, the payment of insurance, storage, drayage,
and, where necessary, the payment of duties, wharf fees, and the like. On
all of these different transactions, he received a commission. And in the
process both of buying and of selling, the factor usually made the credit
arrangements.
The distribution system was also a credit network, with the credit based
on the crop in transit. The cotton trade was financed largely by advances.
Cotton moved in one direction and the advances against its shipment in


[

2

5

The rise of specialized commercial enterprise to handle the flow of
agricultural products out of the interior to the east and Europe was
paralleled by a comparable specialization of enterprise to bring finished
goods and staples into the coastal ports and thence to the interior. After
1815, imports of manufactured products-dry goods, metals, hardware,
and drugs-grew to .an impressive volume. The expanding economy also
increased the demand for coffee, tea, sugar, and molasses, products that
grew in tropical or semitropical countries, and wines and spirits that were
produced in Europe." Before 18 I 5 many of the commission houses which
exported cotton also imported a wide variety of goods from Europe and
the West Indies. But as the new patterns of trade evolved, they tended to
concentrate on cotton exports and a smaller variety of more specialized
imports." In importing standardized goods, they increasingly gave way
to the specialized importer who purchased directly in Europe and sold to
local manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers. Importers differed from
expo!ters, since they o~t~n took title to goods, rather than selling them on
consignment or comrrussion.
The experience of Nathan Trotter of Philadelphia provides a good
example of the new specialized importer." When Trotter joined a family
partnership in 1802, the firm was still importing and exporting a wide
variety of goods. During the Napoleonic Wars the partnership concentrated on importing from Europe dry goods, felt, leather, and metals,
much of which was reshipped and sold to the West Indies and Latin
America. The firm also shipped sugar, molasses, rum, and coffee to the
United States and to Europe. Then, in I 8 16, when Nathan Trotter took
over the firm, he began to concentrate on importing a single line of goods
-iron, copper, and other metals. These he purchased directly in Britain
and northern Europe. As domestic tariffs appeared, raising the price of
metals, he began to buy in the United States. He sold some of the more
finished goods to local retailers and jobbers. But the largest share of his
trade went to traditional artisans (blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and coppersmiths), to artisans who were beginning to specialize in making a single
line of goods (stoves, grates, furnaces, lamps, gas fixtures, and steam
engines), and to new types of craftsmen (roofers and plumbers). Elsewhere in the metals trade, Trotter's story was paralleled by that of Anson
G. Phelps, James Boorman, and Joseph Johnson in New York, and David
Reeves and Alfred Hunt in Philadelphia."
In the years after 1815 a new type of specialized middleman appeared in
the eastern seaports. This was the jobber who, unlike the importer, purchased at home and who, more than the importer, sold his goods to
plantation factors and storekeepers from the south and west. Jobbers
were, in the words of an 1829 report of the New York state legislature,

26 ]


"an intermediate grade of merchants, between the wholesale and importing merchants and the retail shopkeepcrs.?" They "purchased largely at
auctions, at package sales, or wholesale importers, and in other such ways
that they can obtain merchandise in reasonable ways." They then broke
down large lots into smaller more varied ones, to meet the needs of local
retailers and of country storekeepers and plantation factors who made
semiannual purchases in their shops.
As the quotation suggests, the rise of the jobber was closely related
to the use of auctions in the marketing of imported goods." Auctioning
began on a large scale when the British dumped their textiles in New
York and, to a lesser extent, other ports upon the reopening of transatlantic trade at the end of the War of 181 2. In Philadelphia and Boston
established merchants were able to restrict the use of auctions by means
of local and state ordinances. In New York similar attempts failed. The
extensive use of auctions during the 1820S helped to make New York a
mecca for the country trade and brought a concentration of jobbers to
that city. Although used 'primarily in the marketing of textiles, auctions
be~ame employed in the other basic trades as well. During the decade
I82~I-1830 auction sales in New York City amounted to $160 million or
40 percent of the value of that port's total imports and one-fifth of the
value of the entire nation's imports. In 1820, for example, out of a total of
$ I 0.'4 million worth of goods sold at auction in N ew York, $7.0 million
were textiles ($0.7 million of which were American made); $ 1.9 million
groceries, hardware, and drugs; $1.0 million teas, silks, and chinaware
from distant seas; and $0.4 million wines and spirits largely from Europe.?"
In the 1830S and I 840s jobbers began to rely less on auctions and began to
purchase more directly from agents of manufacturers, at first buying from
domestic and then foreign producers.
A check of city directories emphasizes how predominant specialized
business enterprise had become by the I840S in the marketing and distributing of goods in the eastern ports. It also shows in which trades the
jobber had become most influential. For example, Dogget's Directory for
New York City in 1846 indicates that the number of specialized business
enterprises was highest in dry goods and groceries, with 3 I 8 establishments in the first and 22 1 in the second. China, glass, and earthenware
came next with '146, hardware with 91, drugs with 83, wines and spirits
with 82, silks and fancy goods with 74, and watches with 40.31 There were
more jobbers than importers in dry goods, groceries, china, glass, and
earthenware, and about the same number in drugs and wines and spirits.
On the other hand, importers continued to dominate the hardware, fancy
dry goods, and clothing trades. All 40 watch dealers were importers. A
quick and relatively superficial check of directories in other cities indi-


[

2

7

cates that, until the 1850S, jobbers and importers-that is, wholesalers who
took title to their goods instead of selling on commission-were concentrated in the eastern ports of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
In these many ways the specialized impersonalized world of the jobber,
importer, factor, broker, and the commission agent of the river and port
towns replaced the personal world of the colonial merchant. Cotton had
paced the transformation. The massive exports of the new crop provided
payments for greatly expanded imports of manufactured goods and of
foods and beverages that could not be grown or produced in this country.
The flows in and out of the nation and across the ocean came to be handled
by a network of specialized middlemen. Nearly every plantation, farm,
and village in the interior came to have direct commercial access to the
growing cities of the east as well as to the manufacturing centers of
Europe. The output of millions of acres moved every fall over thousands
of miles of water. Dry goods from Manchester, hardware from Birmingham, iron from Sweden, the teas of China, and the coffees of Brazil were
regularly shipped to towns and villages in a vast region which only a few
years before was still wilderness.
This quickly created continental commercial network was coordinated
almost entirely by market mechanisms. Goods produced for other than
local consumption moved through the national and international economy
by a series of market transactions and physical transshipments. The cotton,
as it traveled from the plantation to the river ports (Memphis, Natchez,
Huntsville, Montgomery, and Augusta), to the coastal ports (New
Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston), to the northeastern ports (New
York and Boston), to the continental ports' (Liverpool, Le Havre, Hamburg), and finally to the cotton textile manufacturers in New England,
old England, and the continent, required at the very least four transactions
(between planter, factor, manufacturer's agent, and manufacturer), and
often several more. And it passed through at least four transshipments and
often several more. Provisions from the west moved south and east
through a similar network. Grain from the northwest also went through a
comparable number of transactions and transshipments as it traveled from
the farmer to the country store, to the interior town, river, or lake port, to
the eastern seaport, and then sometimes overseas. The flow of finished
goods involved similar sets of buyers, sellers, and shippers in European
cities, American seaports, and river towns. The granting of credit and the
making of payments required a still different and even more complex set
of transactions and flows.
In the agrarian economy of the first decades of the nineteenth century,
the flow of goods was closely tied to the planting and harvesting of the
crops. The merchants who carried out the commercial transactions and

28 ]


made the arrangements to move the crops out and finished goods in did so
in order to make a profit on each transaction or sale. The American economy of the 1 840S provides a believable illustration of the working of the
untrammeled market economy so eloquently described by Adam Smith.

Specialization in finance and transportation
The expansion of trade in the first decades of the nineteenth century
caused business enterprises to specialize in the financing and transportation
of goods as well as in their marketing and distribution. Specialization in
finance and transportation, unlike that in distribution, led to an important
institutional development: the growth of incorporated joint-stock companies. Merchants continued to use the partnership as the legal form for
shipping and financing ventures, as they did for their trading firms. Only
when they found it advantageous to pool large amounts of capital to
improve financial and transportation services by setting up banks, turnpikes, and canals did they turn to the corporation. At first they looked
on the corporation as the proper legal form for what they considered to
be "private enterprise in the public interest.":" They used it to provide
essential specialized ancillary services to support their profit-making commercial activities. When the pooling of local capital in a corporation was
not enough to provide these services, the merchants did not hesitate to
seek funds from public sources.
, Specialization in finance was a natural concomitant of specialization in
other commercial activities. As trade expanded, the older resident general
merchants often turned to finance. The alternative was to specialize' in
trade with more distant regions, particularly China, India, and the East
Indies, where the low volume of trade and high value of goods made it
possible to continue the old patterns of commerce. For some years after
the War of 1 8 I 2 the Perkinses, Forbeses, and Lees of Boston, and the
Griswolds, Howlands, and Grinnells of New York continued to reap
profits from these more exotic trades. For most general merchants the
old ways were no longer rewarding. They suffered from the same experience as the Browns of Rhode Island. As James B. Hedges has recorded:
"The story of the shipping interests of Brown and Ives from 18 I 5 to 1838
is anti-climactic, a doleful story of gradual decline and decay."?"
For many, the more profitable alternative was to concentrate on
finance. John Jacob Astor, Nathaniel Prime, Stephen Girard, Samuel
Ward, the Browns of Providence, and the Browns of Baltimore were
resident general merchants whose business increasingly became that of
granting credit to and discounting exchanges for other merchants." Later,


[ 29

even successful specialized merchants like Trotter carried on such banking activities. And by the 1820S younger men were entering business as
specialized private bankers and brokers. Fitch & Company of New York,
Thomas Biddle & Company of Philadelphia, and Oelrich & Lurman of
Baltimore were from their beginnings specialized banking enterprises
rather than general mercantile firms.
The most powerful financiers in the American economy after 18 I 5
were, however, those same men who had once held the most influential
partnerships in trade: moving cotton out of and, to a lesser extent, finished
goods into the United States. These were the enterprises that provided
the credit advances so essential to the financing of the cotton trade. As
Britain was the center of finance and had greater capital resources, these
firms were British rather than American. At first they were Liverpool
enterprises, including such firms as Cropper, Benson & Company;
Crowder, Clough & Company; Bolton Ogden & Company; and Rathbone
& Company." After 1820, leading London firms like Baring Brothers and
the three W's (Thomas Wilson & Company, George Wildes & Company, and Thomas Wiggins & Company) entered the trade..The only
American-based firm to become one of the leading Anglo-American
merchant bankers was the Browns of Baltimore, and this firm's central
partnership was housed in Liverpool.
With the merchants and merchant bankers financing interregional and
international movements of trade, the incorporated bank served local
needs. By pooling of local capital in state chartered banks, businessmen
increased sources for long-term loans, based on mortgages, securities,
and even personal promissory notes (if the latter had the additional signature of a co-maker). In the United States early commercial banks became,
therefore, more providers of long and medium capital needs than sources
of short-term commercial loans. As one British commentator noted in
1837 about American banks: "Their rule is our exception, our rule their
exception. They prefer accommodation paper, resting on personal security and fixed wealth, to real bills of exchange, resting on wealth in
transition from merchants and manufacturers to consumers.T" In addition
state chartered banks issued bank notes which became the standard circulating medium in the United States. This was because the United States
government issued almost no paper money until I 862 and only a limited
amount of coin and because bills of exchange were not as abundant as they
were in Europe where they served as the basic medium of exchange. Banks
provided other services. They were relatively safe places to deposit funds.
Their stock could be purchased as an investment at a time when investment opportunities in other than land and nonliquid assets were limited.
Finally, by incorporating a bank, local merchants were able to turn over

30 ]


the day-to-day work in providing specialized financial services to a fulltime salaried employee, who usually had the title of cashier.
The need for such services was strong enough to bring the incorporated
bank quickly to all parts of the nation. The first was the Bank of North
America in Philadelphia chartered in 178 I. In 1790, six more banks were
operating in the major American ports: New York, Philadelphia, Boston,
Baltimore, and Charleston. In 1791,Congress approved Alexander Hamilton's proposal for a federally chartered bank with headquarters in Philadelphia and branches in the larger towns. The chartering of banks boomed
in the 1790S and again after the charter of the First Bank of the United
States expired in .18 I I . Between I 8 I I and I 8 I 5 the number increased from
88 to 206.37 With the expansion of the economy after 181 5, the number
jumped again. In 1816 alone, 40 banks were chartered, and by 1820 there
were 307. In the late I 820S and the early I 830s, a period during which the
Second Bank of the United States was providing excellent services, the
number leveled off. In those two decades, however, local banking business
had expanded enough to encourage the opening of even more specialized
financial institutions in the United States, including savings banks and
trust companies."
By 1830, the Second Bank of the United States was not only providing
high quality local banking services but also operating on a national and
indeed international scale. For a brief period it competed most successfully with the merchant bankers in the financing of the flow of domestic
and international trade. It did so because it was the only commercial
institution to have a number of branches-twenty-two located in all parts
of the country by 1830. No other financial institution operated on this
scale. Merchant bankers often had interlocking partnerships but these
partnerships rarely operated in more than three commercial centers.
Merchant bankers continued to handle their business in distant ports
almost wholly through correspondents, other merchants who were paid
by commission.
Nicholas Biddle, who became the Second Bank's president in 1823,
fully appreciated the value of using its branches to finance American
trade. He realized that the branches provided an administrative network
that permitted the transfer of funds and credit throughout the country by
means of a series of accounting transactions between branches controlled
and supervised by the Philadelphia headquarters. He indicated how this
was accomplished when he described the activities of the New Orleans
branch to a congressional committee in 1832.
Th~ course of the western business is to send the produce to New Orleans, to

draw bills on the proceeds, which bills are purchased at the various branches, and
remitted to the branch at New Orleans. When the notes issued by the several


[ 3I

branches find their way in the course of trade to the Atlantic branches, the western
branches pay the Atlantic branches by drafts on their funds accumulated at the
branch at New Orleans, which pay the Atlantic branches by bills growing out of
the purchases made in New Orleans on account of the northern merchants or
manufacturers, thus completing the circle of operations. This explains the large
amount of business done at that branch.P?

Foreign exchanges were handled in much the same way. Payments made
by the British and Europeans for American cotton and other commodities
were deposited, normally with London merchant bankers, and became
the source of funds and credit for American merchants purchasing goods
abroad. The Second Bank is an early and highly successful example of the
administrative coordination of monetary flows. Such coordination permitted Biddle to increase the bank's domestic exchange business from $1.8
million a month in 1823, to $5.02 million in 1828, and $22.6 million in
1832. At the same time, the bank came to dominate the nation's foreign
exchange business."
The Second Bank was, however, short-lived. Its concentrated economic
power and its role as the federal government's banker made its activities
and even its very existence a major political issue. In 1832, Andrew
Jackson vetoed a bill to recharter the bank in 1836. The veto, which
probably helped to re-elect Jackson to the presidency, assured the end of
the Second Bank of the United States. After its demise in 1836, merchants,
particularly the more specialized merchant bankers, continued to finance
the long-distance trades. The state incorporated banks continued to serve
local communities and domestic trade, increasing in number from 506 in
1834 to 9°1 in 1840. The Barings, the Browns, and a small number of
lesser survivors handled the financing of a major portion of American
imports and exports after the financial panics of 1837 and 1839 destroyed
several of the British merchant banking houses, including the three W'S.41
The history of insurance companies in the United States parallels
closely that of the state incorporated banks. By pooling resources in an incorporated insurance company, resident merchants, importers, exporters,
and a growing number of specialized shipping enterprises were able to get
cheaper insurance rates. At the same time, salaried employees of the new
insurance firms (appraisers and inspectors) could concentrate on the
more technical and routine aspects of the business. Again, as in the case of
banks, the insurance companies provided a source for long-term loans,
primarily based on mortgages, and their stocks were held as investments.
Their number grew quickly. The first American company to insure ships
and their cargoes was incorporated in 1792. By 1800, there were twelve
marine insurance companies in the United States and by 1807, forty." As
in the case of the banks, the numbers leveled off in the 1820S, with New

32

]


York supporting around twenty and other ports a somewhat smaller
number. Nearly all these companies handled only the business of local
shippers and ship owners. Fire insurance was slower in developing. Until
the great New York fire of 1835, fire insurance was written on a small
local scale, often by marine insurance companies. As for life insurance,
scarcely a handful of firms operated in the United States before the midI840s, when the first mutual life insurance company was formed. Only
after the country began to industrialize and urbanize rapidly did the
issuing of life insurance become a significant business.
In the early years of the republic, merchants regarded transportation
companies as they did financial instirutions.IThey were primarily vehicles
for providing services vital to the furtherance of their commercial activities. The incorporation of turnpike and canal companies made possible
the pooling of capital required to improve overland rights of way. And
when the capital pooled by incorporation was not enough to complete the
new overland rights-of-way, American businessmen quickly turned to
local, state, and national governments for the necessary funds. On the
other hand, they rarely suggested that the government operate the
common carriers that used the turnpikes and canals. These enterprises
continued to be operated by individuals and partnerships but not by
corporatIons.
In the colonial period, the only common carriers (that is, enterprises
specializing wholly in transporting goods and passengers, with services
available to any user) were a small number of ferries, stagecoaches, and
wagon lines. The stagecoaches, carrying passengers and mail, but very
little freight, ran on the most informal schedules. The wagon lines were
even more unscheduled. Teamsters, usually located in country towns,
picked up loads from storekeepers and brought them to the larger ports.
There the teamsters waited until the city merchant had a return shipment
to their home towns. This method continued to be used until the early
1830S even in Philadelphia, a city whose large hinterland was served by
the best turnpike system in the nation.
As the roads were relatively few and travel over them a bone-shaking
experience, most passengers and nearly all freight moved by water. The
most impressive growth of common carriers came, therefore, in the
development of shipping lines on waterways. During the colonial period,
there were no common carriers on water routes except for an occasional
ferry. Merchants who owned or who had shares in ships often "rented"
space to other merchants. The former, however, were under no obligation
to carry another merchant's goods and did so only when they themselves
had no need of the space. Moreover, in the eighteenth century, ships did
not follow any specific schedules or ply between two termini. They

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